Acer Pins High Hopes on Netbooks Despite of Lowering Demand.

Despite of lowering demand towards netbooks, Acer Group, the world’s top supplier of such systems, still pins a lot of hopes on the market. According to the chairman of Acer, shipments of mobile computers will increase to 200 million units, whereas shipments of netbooks will total 50 million with Acer leading the market. Analyst, however, disagree with the high-ranking executive.

JT Wang, the chairman of Acer Group, has reportedly said in an interview with DigiTimes web-site that this year shipments of notebooks will grow 32% to 170 million units in 2009 and then 17.6% to 200 million devices in 2010. According to the executive, supplies of netbooks will also increase to 25 – 30 million in 2009 and to 50 million in 2010.

Acer projects that it will continue to remain the largest supplier of netbooks on the globe and will have 40% to 50% market share, thus, will ship up to 15 million and up to 25 million of netbooks in 2009 and 2010, respectively.

According to IDC, worldwide shipments of portable personal computers will total 148.6 million of units in 2009 and 169.6 million in 2010, considerably less compared to prediction of Mr. Wang. Moreover, shipments increase of mobile PCs in 2009 will only be 4.5%. Finally, IDC only predicts total available market of netbooks to reach 30 million units in 2010.

Recently sources familiar with the matter said that Acer, Asustek Computer and Microstar International did not meet netbook shipments expectations in Q1 2009. On Wednesday, the 29th of April, Acer Group slashed its netbook shipments expectations to 12 million from 15 million for the year, further questioning feasibility of the numbers announced by the chairman. Besides, rumours emerged recently that even Intel recently had hard times selling its netbook-oriented Atom processors.